Lonely

I’m lonely tonight. More than usual. I’m sad. I am hungry, and I know I need to eat, but there’s nothing in the house and dealing with food is just seeming really hard right now. Money is tight, so ordering something to be delivered is a bad choice. I don’t need someone to bring me food; I’ll end up doing something about it myself. It would really be nice, and help me out a lot right now. I wanted to turn to my wife and say that, and say “could you take care of it tonight?” My wife’s not here, though, and this whole situation is just making me feel extra alone.

What’s cool about that is that I know exactly what thing it is that would help me right now, and not only am I willing and able to say it, I actually want to. Before I would hold onto those things – I would tell myself what a wuss I was being, and that I shouldn’t expect that from other people. And I shouldn’t expect it, but I can ask someone who cares about me to do something reasonable like that. They might not be able to, or they might not be willing, or whatever, but I can ask. I’m not going to ask friends to bring food to my house. I considered it briefly, but I think that, since this is a want, not a need, it’s not cool to ask people that aren’t already here, or coming here for another reason. But I thought about just saying on Facebook “hey, I could really do with this specific type of help tonight. Can anyone help me out.” And just, that I thought it would be okay to say that out in the open, that’s awesome. It really is. I’m not ashamed of my depression… or is this anxiety? I think I might also have anxiety (side note). But, yeah, I don’t feel any shame or guilt or whatever about wishing I had some help right now. I also don’t feel entitled to it, or like people are against me or anything. Like, I’m not sitting here going “no one would bother because they’re all jerks, and screw them all, and I should be waited on.”

This is a big new thing, and here’s why. Before, I would let myself ask for this kind of help, but consider it a defeat. I would do it because I knew intellectually it was the right thing to do. I would feel guilty, and pathetic for wanting or needing it. I don’t feel any of that. It’s just a thing that’s kind of hard right now, and some help would be nice. My illness is making it difficult. It’s no different than someone with arthritis saying “hey could you cook tonight; my hands are really flaring up and it would be really painful for me.” No different. And I BELIEVE that. I feel that. It’s okay that I could use some help right now. It’s okay that I want some help when I don’t actually need help, and it would be okay to ask people for that help if it isn’t putting them out too much. If it was a need, I would ask someone, and I wouldn’t feel badly about it. I’m really excited by this change in my outlook. It is not something that used to happen, so this is an attitude shift that came from a significant change. I’m healing from a lot of stuff. I’m really happy about it.